A Change of Pace
by Sharpsword
Summary: Five times in an AU Jeff says something sweet to make a situation better, and one time he doesn't. Also known as That Fic With The Murder. Jeff/Annie. M because of Jeff using bad words now and then. Otherwise T. Originally posted at Milady Milord.
1. Chapter 1

Jeff walks down the gray hall with long strides. The suit feels a little too much for this particular occasion, but he's not making an appearance as a boyfriend, but as a (tentative – he has no idea if she's going to pull out some moral bullshit and stop him) lawyer.

And anyway, Annie likes him in suits.

xxxxx

A day ago, Jeff had been taking a nap in his office during lunch when his secretary had woken him up with an urgent call.

From the Denver Police Station.

_Ms. Edison_, she'd just said as an explanation.

Mind wondering foggily why Annie was calling him instead of being at her estranged/not-estranged mother's wedding, he'd answered the phone.

Five minutes later, he was making rapid calls trying to clear his day so he could go down to Denver and figure out why the hell his girlfriend was being accused of murdering her own mother.

xxxxx

So here he is, waiting in front of a glass panel for a guard to bring his girlfriend (it's been… what? Barely two months?) out.

For the first time, Jeff views the situation in a completely different way.

This isn't a meeting with some jackass who banged his rich daddy's car into a statue at night, completely sloshed, or a pot-bellied business man whose wife has promised him a lot of money and a night that will be completely worth his while, if he just managed to get 'this troublesome little nonsense' thrown out of court.

This is him waiting to meet his wrongly accused girlfriend so they can figure out a way to get her out of jail.

Moments later, she appears and sits down opposite him with a faint smile.

And _fuck it_, this sucks. Annie isn't supposed to be wearing an orange jumpsuit, or supposed to be sporting slight cut-marks around her wrists that no-doubt she got when police officers snapped cuffs on her.

At the mental image of the police snapping cuffs around her delicate wrists and pushing her into a squad car, he grits his teeth.

Annie – who looks like she cares more about what Jeff is feeling, despite the fact that she's been in _jail _for a night – moves forward to place her mouth carefully near the little mike in front of her.

"What's wrong?" There's note of exasperation in there somewhere, like she's trying to say _'yeah, I know what's wrong, Jeff, I'm just trying to start the conversation!'_

He narrows his eyes at her and shakes his head.

"Lost a pen earlier."

She snorts. "Must be eating away at you."

He nods. "Yep."

She tilts her head to the side. "How come?"

"It seems like I can't look after anything, right now, that's why."

He wants to bite his tongue almost immediately, because _damn it_, he wasn't supposed to say it out loud.

Annie's halfway to her Disney Face (he's already decided that when they're in trial, he's making her milk that for all it's worth) when he starts talking again.

"Look, just – let's focus, okay?"

Annie nods and stiffens herself a bit (_"are you trying to be formidable?"_). "How's the group?"

Christ.

xxxxx

Satisfied that their friends are well, and that Britta isn't planning on bombing the facility to break her out, and that Abed and Troy have been fed, Annie leans back in her chair for a moment before moving forward again to look him in his eyes.

"And what about you, Jeff?" There's something in her eyes; she expects a certain answer, but he doesn't know what she wants, so he just settles for snark.

"Oh, I'm _fine_. I'm just sitting at a correctional facility, so I can get started on making a good case to a court for my girlfriend to be exonerated."

Annie sighs and shakes her head before looking back at him.

He's not sure if this means he's said what she expected, or he hasn't.

Whatever. This is his job, and he's going to focus on it before going back to his mom's house and contemplating his girlfriend's inexplicably calm and introspective behaviour when she should be freaking out because she's in jail over a big tumbler of scotch.

"Tell me in detail what happened since you left Greendale."

xxxxx

Apparently, everything had been fine until the night before last.

Annie was supposed to have met her mom at the hotel she was at, as some sort of mother-daughter bonding thing that her mom had wanted to do before the wedding the next day.

Except she'd never turned up, and her phone had been switched off.

Annie falters a little when she gets to the part of her giving up hope that her mom would show (he knows very well though that's she probably raided the minibar and burst into tears), but then continues with the story.

She'd gone to sleep, then woken up at seven and had decided to go to her mom's new house to talk.

When she'd reached the house, though, no one had answered.

The next part surprises him.

She'd been about to leave, when her shoe had stepped on a key – an extra key to the front door.

Annie's voice gets bitter and her words are heavy as she reluctantly recounts how she walked in ("..like a fool, Jeff!"), too busy dealing with anger to think about why the key was in plain sight or anything.

She hadn't been too busy to see the spread-eagled and bloody body of her mother lying in the floor in front of her T.V.

Jeff winces and wishes that there's some way he can avoid asking Annie more questions.

He can't.

xxxxx

They stare in silence at each other, as Jeff resists the urge to punch the glass away, so he can reach out and grab Annie.

(Her hand is making little vague designs on the glass pane, only about two inches from his on the other side of the glass, which twitches involuntarily. Annie's hand stills.)

There's a shuddered intake of breath from her, and Jeff's head shoots up in alarm.

Annie's staring at him with bright, slightly watery eyes.

"It's like we're just not supposed to be together."

What?

He doesn't need to vocalize this, Annie's still talking.

"I mean, we dance around each other for four years in college, dealing with everyone and everything telling me that we shouldn't be together…"

He doesn't know where she's going with this.

"And then there were all the _rules._ Maybe it's just the way the world works – maybe thirteen years really is too much of a difference. Or maybe we're just too wrong for each other."

The fuck?

"And now the _judicial system_ is keeping us apart. Because I was in my mom's house when the police came! I-"

He knows why she's saying this crap – she has, after all, had enough time to be melancholy and come up with a thousand things that are going wrong and will (because really, this is Annie Edison), but Jeff starts to feel something snap inside of him.

"Even Abed once told me something about our two-foot height disparity… I don't remember properly what he'd said, but-"

He's finally with an amazing human being, and really, if this is the way the universe works, then fuck the universe.

"Damn the rules." It comes out as a rebellious mutter, but she hears and stops ranting.

"What?"

He looks up. "Damn the rules. Damn the system. And damn our two-feet height disparity!"


	2. Chapter 2

Jeff became an unfortunate insomniac till Annie's appeal. He just wasn't in the frame of mind to relax. Or sleep.

Because with each passing day, he was getting closer and closer to the appeal, and Jeff had nothing for Annie's defence. Whereas she had a bunch of witnesses, ranging from the police to neighbours, who were willing to tell the world that Annie had gone in to her mom's house with a key, and that she'd been found standing over her mother's very bloody, very _dead_ body.

Maybe before Greendale, he wouldn't have been worried. No, wait. He _knows_ he wouldn't have been worried. He would have been sleeping deeply, with a different woman in his bed on alternate nights, barely caring about the girl sitting in jail, who was depending on her lawyer to get her life back to normal. He wouldn't have been even slightly bothered, because he would've have been certain that even one of his unprepared speeches would have swept away the judge and jury.

Hell, he would have been certain that a stolen speech from some random Law and Order episode would have swept away the judges and jury.

But now he's not that man anymore. And if Jeff is honest, then he'll admit to himself that his confidence levels are nowhere near what they were in the past. Yes, he has been catching up to his original record for winning cases, but this matter is entirely different.

It's Annie.

There's an added sense of responsibility.

So now he's stuck, sitting in his mom's dark living room with a glass of scotch (again), wondering why he doesn't just have the balls to be Tango Winger anymore.

He has about a day and a half before Annie's appeal, and the pressure's not helping.

The doorbell rings. Frowning, Jeff looks up from his glass to the clock on the wall opposite. It's ten thirty. His mom stays in a sweet little neighbourhood that goes to sleep at nine thirty every night. So who is it?

Pulling himself out of the squishy armchair he'd sunk into, Jeff walks quickly to the door before the person can ring the doorbell again. His mom's happy that he's staying with her and all, but he doesn't think she'd be thrilled to wake up because he was too lazy to open the door.

He opens the door and stares blankly in front of him for a second.

"Well?" Britta asks crabbily. "We all just drove here, Winger, and tried to find your mom's house in a neighbourhood that's totally unhelpfully asleep. Are you going to let us in?"

xxxxx

Shirley, Britta, Pierce, Troy and Abed. He's not sure why he's surprised.

Of course, his mom is the strangest person ever, so she goes nuts about his friends showing up and tries to find ways to accommodate everyone, all the time chattering gaily about how she'd started to worry he had no friends at all.

xxxxx

"Okay, are you sure about this, Britta?" Jeff asks, casting a careful glance around them. The streets are empty, but he knows from experience that more often than not, when you're trying to be sneaky, people tend to be looking outside windows.

Britta rolls her eyes. "Look, Winger, if you don't have the guts to do this, just tell me, I'll go in alone."

He sends her glare. "We're not exactly inconspicuous, okay, Britta?"

"Hey, it's not my fault you're a freak of nature, Mr. McTall."

Quietly and quickly, she darts forward, crosses the road and slips through the yellow police tape lines to the front door of Annie's mom's house.

By the time Jeff gets to her, she has successfully picked the lock.

"It's disturbing that you're so calm about breaking and entering." He tells her softly, as he enters and shuts the door closed behind him.

She whirls around. "Whatever. But remember, just don't touch anything, okay?"

He frowns and grabs her arm. "Britta?"

"What?"

"Is there some murky past that I don't know about? Because I kinda want to be prepared for the day I get a call from _you_ to save your ass from embezzlement charges."

She pulls her arm free with a_ very_ disturbing grin and walks to a different room, carefully sidestepping the large red blood spot on the cream coloured carpet.

Casting his mind back, Jeff remembers what the medical examiner had said about the cause of death. Annie's mom had supposedly fallen and hit her head on the coffee table.

Shaking his head, he moves to the fancy little chest on the side and pulls the first drawer open.

Thank god Britta gave him gloves to wear. Having their fingerprints discovered at the scene of the crime would kind of screw things up.

xxxxx

"Jeff? Look at this."

He crosses over to look at a large leather folder in Britta's hands.

"It was on the bed."

Carefully, she hands it to him, and he studies it.

Annie's name is stuck on the front, in carefully printed letters. Flipping the folder open, he sifts through a stack of papers and photos.

It takes them a moment to figure out what they're looking at.

"Holy crap."

"Are those… photos of Annie at Greendale? Taken from behind a tree?"

"Did Annie's mom have someone stalk her own daughter?"

Britta lifts a paper entitled '_location'_ delicately.

"This is so creepy. It's got a list of every place Annie's stayed at till now. Even our apartment addresses, listed under 'Possible'!"

Jeff can feel how close Britta is to her _1984_ rant, or her rant about freedom, but he doesn't do much to stop it.

Because_ what_ gets creepier than this?

Then he sees it.

Under _'character data'_, there's a write-up about Annie's personality and habits from the point of view of the stalker. Personal detective. Whatever. There's even a section called _'romantic liasons'_.

He flips the folder closed when he sees his own name in that section.

Britta's phone rings and she checks it.

"Come on – Troy said that Abed said that he saw a police car turning onto this road."

"Guess it was a good idea to keep them posted as lookouts, huh?"

Rapidly, they exit the room, making sure they've left everything where it was.

As Britta leads him to the backdoor, simultaneously tripping on an errant scarf while she tells Shirley and Pierce to get on with their part of the plan, she mutters about the trip being a complete waste.

But something niggles at the back of his mind.

He's not sure what exactly it is.

xxxxx

The plan was for Pierce and Shirley to visit the houses on either side of Annie's mom's house, so whoever was inside would have to open the doors and not look out the window in time to see two people skulking out of a crime scene.

Britta and Jeff make it successfully out of the house to Jeff's Lexus before the police car Troy and Abed mentioned drives by.

xxxxx

Britta goes to the house Pierce is in, to help him get information (and not bumble things up), while he goes to Shirley, who is in Annie's mom's best friend's house.

And no, it doesn't matter what happens, but he cannot call her mom Barbara.

It's just weird.

xxxxx

At the door, when Jeff introduces himself to the calm, straw-haired woman (Hailey Clark), he's fixed with a quick flash of recognition that he pretends to not see.

When he walks in, Shirley sends him a quick signal they'd decided on earlier.

It means she's got nothing from Clark.

_Yet_, he thinks grimly, as he sits down on the uncomfortably flowered futon he's directed to.

xxxxx

"So, um, you're Annie Edison's lawyer, is it?"

"Yeah. Were you close to her mother?"

Clark smiles sadly. "We were best friends, Mr. Winger."

Oh. Well.

Slowly, he weaves a tapestry of magical persuasion and pulls out information from Clark. (He's actually proud of himself. Four years and _Jeff Winger still has the power of incomparable charm. _And yes. Tapestry.)

Apparently, she doesn't believe that Annie could be the murderer.

"The way Barbara talked about her daughter… quite frankly, despite the pill-popping, I don't see how a girl who sounds so sweet can be capable of murder."

Shirley manages to sweetly get her to open up about her friendship with Barbara Edison.

"Oh, well, I was actually her therapist when she moved here. She was this incredibly bitter woman in the starting… and she never stopped talking about her ex-husband, or her daughter. But suddenly, I don't know what happened exactly, she just… changed. Barb turned her life around. She began building a new one, and started talking about making amends with Annie."

She pauses.

"I encouraged the growth, and I introduced her to my friend, Alex Levinson."

A bulb lights up somewhere in Jeff's head.

"Isn't that-"

She nods. "Barbara's fiancé. Anyway, things worked out so well… we became good friends, and then suddenly, Alex and Barbara were together. She managed to make herself another life, one worthy of envy… even then, she just kept talking about her daughter."

Jeff studies the woman.

"Ms. Clark, if I asked-"

"Would I testify to Annie's character in court? I've never met her, but if you think it will help, I'll be glad to do it, Mr. Winger."

When he and Shirley are leaving, Clark – with an air of not being able to hold it in any longer – asks him if his first name is Jeffrey.

He stops. "Yes. How do you know?"

She looks flustered for a moment. "I heard Barb talking about you, I just couldn't make the connection."

xxxxx

The niggling worry in the back of his mind intensifies.

But he decides not to dwell on it, because the rest of the group wants to meet Annie before the appeal.

Once they're done with registration at the lobby (it takes him ten minutes to get Pierce to understand that he can't bribe the prison official to skip registration for visitors), they follow a guy to some group meeting place (what, he barely remembers this place, it's been _years_).

As they walk, they have to pass by a large courtyard full of women.

As one, the group tries to find Annie.

They finally see her in the opposite corner - dominating a group of women. As they watch, she carefully issues some kind of orders, before catching sight of them.

For a second, she looks surprised, then _Their_ Annie breaks through, and she sends them a sunny, little wave.

As they wait at their assigned table _("please remember, no contact"),_ Troy finally breaks.

"Um, how did Annie get awesome at being in jail?"

xxxxx

Predictably, Annie thinks it's horrible that Britta and Jeff did something illegal to help her, and stoutly denies that she's warmed up to her new role of 'jailbird'. (Abed's word.)

"I just realized that there's no point of just waiting around to be picked on, you know? And this place isn't all that bad, really, it's sort of like the kind of place you'd imagine Professor Kane had spent time at, studying Biology."

Annie makes it sound like Kane went to a library and not a jail.

"So, anyway, there's this underground poker session that happens every night, and if you win…" She trails off delicately.

"So cool," Troy breathes out.

"Yeah, I am so proud of you, Annie." Britta says, beaming.

Everyone stops and stares at Britta, who looks self-conscious.

"I mean, you're taking your fate in your hands and stuff. That's why."

Abed sighs. "Can we get to the point and tell Annie more stuff about her appeal and Jeff's preparations? I've seen enough episodes of drama shows to know that we'll waste time this way, and then Jeff will forget to tell Annie something crucial that will end up costing us her freedom."

His curt irritation sobers everyone up.

xxxxx

After about fifteen minutes of briefing (technically, Jeff's not at the facility as an attorney, so it's possibly not in keeping with the rules to _act_ like an attorney, but whatever), another bout of uncomfortable silence descends.

Annie finally looks up at him. "You know, it would just be easier for you to get yourself a new girlfriend."

He hears worry this time, in her voice, so he smiles and fights the urge to let his hand settle on Annie's pale one. In that moment, he knows what to say – to Annie, and the next day in court.

"Please. I'm going nuts without you. I see your value now, Edison."


	3. Chapter 3

Jeff can't sleep again, the night before Annie's trial. He tosses and turns in bed, listening absently to the creaky sounds of the old house around him and cursing the short bed in the back of his mind.

He sees the night off and greets the morning, completely aware of having had not even a single minute of sleep.

Suddenly, he can't take it. Pausing only to check the time (it's six in the morning), Jeff gets out of bed and quickly grabs some clothes before jumping into the shower. He has to meet someone.

xxxxx

"Alex Levinson?"

The short man in front of him looks blearily at his face. "That's me. Who're you?"

"I'm Jeff Winger. Um, I'm-"

Before Jeff can flounder an explanation out (_come on, man, you're appearing in court at twelve!), _Levinson sighs and beckons Jeff inside.

"I know who you are."

"That seems to be happening a lot." He says dryly, stepping past Levinson, noting the faint whiff of whisky on him.

"Yeah well, Barb never shut up about Annie, so I wouldn't be surprised if that newborn baby down three blocks knows who she is… or who her boyfriend is."

There isn't bitterness in the sentence though. Just a sort of weary affection.

Jeff reaches the living room and turns to face the man who was Annie's mom's fiancé.

"I need to ask you some questions."

Levinson nods. "The trial is today at twelve, right?" Rubbing his hands on his face, he sits with a huff on a couch and gestures at Jeff to do the same.

xxxxx

"And _was_ Barbara spying on Annie?"

"Yes. Though she always refrained from calling it that." A wane smile flickers across Levinson's face for a moment, before vanishing.

Taking a gulp of coffee, he continues. "Barbara hired a PI a couple of months after she moved here. I don't know what exactly motivated her, but she did it. Apparently, she had no way of finding out what Annie was up to otherwise, because she'd stopped sending Barb updates via email."

"Rightly so," Jeff says, before he can stop himself.

Levinson nods. "Barb said that all the time as well. Anyway, the PI did a great job. He continuously added to the file, getting more and more information on Annie. I tried telling Barb to stop and to just call her daughter, but she was too stubborn to…"

Jeff waits for the rest of the story, sitting on the very edge of his seat.

"She saw how her daughter had taken life in her own hands. And that was it. She didn't tell many people, but Barb decided to do the same. If her daughter could bounce back from a pill addiction, then she could bounce back from the bitter old creature she'd turned into after her divorce."

His face softens as his eyes look off into the distance. "And then I met the _real_ Barbara. And I fell in love with her."

Jeff gives him a moment before coughing discreetly, to bring the man back to the present. "Have you seen the file?"

Levinson nods. "I had only heard about it for the longest time, but then I saw it for the first time just after I proposed to Barb."

Here's the important part. Jeff feels himself tensing.

"Do you remember-"

He raises his hand in the universal signal that means 'shut up'. "I have a copy, Jeff."

xxxxx

As Alex Levinson tells him why Barbara had given him a copy of every piece of information she had on her daughter ("she always said that she trusted me more than her bank"), Jeff quickly flips through the file.

Yep. It's all there.

_I can use this. _Jeff thinks calmly, letting his eyes wonder through the pages one more time. _It wouldn't be hard._

Snapping it shut, Jeff looks back up at Levinson.

"I need to find the PI."

xxxxx

Driving at a speed that would have given his mom a heart attack, Jeff reaches the PI's place in record time.

Getting out, he doesn't even give himself the chance to survey the run-down building and runs inside.

xxxxx

"Um, hey. I'm here to see Mr. Rider?"

The blonde-but-really-brunette secretary doesn't look up from her crossword (he can see from across the desk that she's really bad at it) and lazily tells him that he'd have to wait.

Sighing inwardly, Jeff decides he's going to have to Winger his way into this.

Leaning forward, he carefully lets out a fake regretful sigh and mutters an apology, making sure to let his voice drop a little.

Fake Blondie looks up and a smile slowly unfurls on her face as she surreptitiously tries to pull down her low-cut blouse.

xxxxx

"Rider."

Through the gloom, Jeff can just make out a chair and desk in front of him before the chair swivels to show a short man sitting in it.

"Come in. How can I… help you?" The man's words are oily and smooth.

Rolling his eyes, Jeff walks to the desk.

"_Godfather_ fan?" He asks pleasantly.

The PI drops his fake voice and nods happily. "I tried using a cat too, but the creature kept biting me." He frowns a bit. "I feel like I've seen you. Give me a minute, I should get it."

Jeff leans forward, taking pleasure in seeing his shadow fall across Rider's face, and introduces himself, raising his right arm for a handshake. The cloud on Rider's face clears. "Ohh! You're th-"

With a sharp pull, Jeff yanks the little man out of his chair on half-over his desk.

"Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to need you to do something for me."

Rider's eyes cross in an effort to keep Jeff in sight.

"Or what?"

_Well, the guy likes mobsters…_ Jeff thinks.

xxxxx

"Tell me again how you got my stalker to be a witness?" Annie asks quietly, leaning closer to him and pressing her side into the cool marble wall they're standing next to.

Jeff considers not telling her for a moment. "I sort of implied that I had friends in the Denver underworld who would be very happy to help me clean a few 'messes' up."

Annie's eyes widen comically for a second before she lets out a reluctant giggle. He joins in, letting all his earlier tension out. Now that he has Rider to prove that Annie was in her hotel room when the murder had taken place… They're free.

Annie's giggles subside and she regards Jeff thoughtfully. "Why didn't Rider step up earlier?" She asks, a furrow appearing between her eyebrows.

He sighs. "He's just selfish enough to not care about whether or not you were going to be in jail. As far as he was concerned, he'd been paid already, and he didn't want to go through the hassle of appearing in court."

xxxxx

"Just keep calm, alright, Annie?" Jeff whispers in Annie's ear, keeping a disapproving eye on her rigid frame.

She relaxes a fraction and nods slowly.

"We'll get through this," he tells her softly, before leaning back into his chair.

"All rise!"

There's a loud scrape as chairs are pushed back and the judge enters the court.

xxxxx

It's smooth sailing till the prosecution calls his first witness.

He tries to not hurl abuses at her as she makes her way delicately to the witness stand.

He feels a poke on his left arm and moves his head closer to Annie's.

"I thought you said Hailey Clark was going to stick up for me? Give my mom's point of view and all of that stuff you told me?" She whispers.

He holds back a growl. "She changed sides for some reason."

They watch in pissed off silence as Clark sadly tells the court that though she believed Annie to be innocent _at first_… there really was no one else who could be the murderer.

xxxxx

"Mr. Rider. Can you tell the court what your job is, please?" Jeff asks calmly, taking quiet pleasure in seeing the way Rider was fidgeting in his seat.

"Um, I'm a private investigator."

"And what have you been working on recently?"

"I've been following someone for the past three years or so… getting info on her, and all."

Jeff rolls his eyes. He'd told the idiot to be specific.

"And who exactly _were _you stalking?"

Rider balks at the last word, but answers his question.

"Annie Edison."

"Who told you to follow her around?" Jeff asks, ignoring the resultant murmur in the room.

"Her mom. Barbara Edison."

"Were you still watching Annie the day her mother died?"

He sees Annie shrink a little from the corner of his eye.

"Uh, yeah."

Silence. Jeff suppresses a grin; the whole court is aware of the implications of this.

"And what was she doing that morning?"

"Well, uh, I don't know what exactly, but she, she um," the man stuttered his way through, looking like the world was trying to burn him in a vat of rat crap instead of being made to answer a few questions in a courtroom, "she was in her hotel."

Jeff raised his eyebrows. _Really, does this guy have no idea what 'specific' means?_

"Explain," he says curtly.

"She was in her room. I – I know because I have a picture of her in the window."

He hears a disapproving mumble from the room (and a very audible squeak of surprise from Annie).

"When was this?"

"At nine fifteen or so."

Jeff nods and walks back to where Annie is sitting. Picking up an envelope he'd left there, he opens it and turns back to Rider.

Removing the small stack of photographs, he continues with his questions.

xxxxx

The prosecutor's closing statement is a drab monologue. The man doesn't even try, because he knows as well as everyone else in the courtroom, that Annie Edison, though a subject of some serious breach of privacy rights, is not a murderer.

When it's his turn to give his statement, Jeff gets up and sends a confident grin at Annie's still-blushing face (the pictures Rider had taken were… rather revealing). After four years of 'Winger Speeches' at Greendale, Jeff's had enough practice with this.

"We came here today expecting to see the trial of a cold-blooded killer, to see a woman who inexplicably murdered her estranged mother. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury -"

xxxxx

They wait with bated breath as a jury member stands up and informs the court of the final decision.

Their hands find each other's under the table.

"_Not guilty."_

xxxxx

"Oh, An-nie! It's so good to be able to hug you!"

"This entire thing felt very off-genre to me. But I'm a sucker for the ending. It's happy."

"This is exactly how I felt when I saw the ending of _Up_. UP, Annie. That's how much I love you."

"I guess there was some perk of you going out with Snarky Forehead here, huh?"

"Just so you know, if Winger had failed, I was going to start flashing some serious money around."

The group doesn't let go of Annie for a second. The seven of them stand right outside the courthouse, blocking the way, making loud plans for celebrating Annie's freedom.

After a while (Troy and Britta start having a fight, because she insulted _Up_), Annie turns to Jeff.

Beaming, she fiddles with his tie as she aims the full blast of her smile at his face.

"So I guess Jeff Winger never lost his powers, huh?"

Jeff just leans down to kiss her lightly on the lips – but hell yeah, he's still got his powers.

xxxxx

Just as they're leaving, Jeff and Annie catch a glimpse of Hailey Clark getting into her own car.

Noticing them, she levels a hard glare in their direction before driving away.

"What do you think happened there?" Annie asks softly.

Jeff looks down. He doesn't have an answer, but Annie looks like she needs one. He racks his brains, trying to find a suitable reply, feeling the atmosphere getting tense.

Finally, he gives up. Turning to her, he tenderly pushes her hair behind her shoulders.

"Does it matter?"

She opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off.

"I have you in my arms, and that is all I'm thinking of right now."


	4. Chapter 4

The air conditioner hums quietly in the background, letting out a casual splutter now and again.

It probably should accept that no one is going to pay it any attention, because the occupants of the room (Jeff and Annie) are wrapped up in their own activities.

The kind of activities that involve Annie letting out quiet, breathy little gasps every time Jeff kisses his favourite tender spot on her neck.

It's a welcome break from the hell they've had to endure in the past few days.

For a moment, Annie pulls away and Jeff appreciates the way her big blue eyes look in the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains and the light from the air conditioner's panel.

She gives him a shy sort of smile, running her right hand lightly through his hair.

Jeff's grip tightens on her waist, and he leans down again to kiss his girlfriend, pressing her further into the soft bedcovers beneath her.

xxxxx

After Annie's trial, Jeff kicked the rest of the group out of his mom's house (which did not go down well with his mom until he pointed out that it was sort of inhuman to make five guests live cramped up in one room and a living room) to go and live in an 'inn' (he figures it's a hipster way of saying 'no buffet breakfast or swimming pool, bitches') that is situated at the opposite end of the neighbourhood.

Shirley decided to leave instead, reminding everyone that she _did_ in fact have a family and a café to look after. After a few hours, Pierce got bored of hitting on the maids at the inn (and the widowed innkeeper) and decided to head back to Greendale as well. Troy and Abed got kicked out by nightfall because they insisted on looking for 'clues' for 'zombies' and chucking random crap at tired people. Britta, realizing that she was the only one left, cited the reason that the inn offered zero alcohol and beat it.

Neither Annie nor Jeff were bothered by any of this.

They decided to stay in Denver for a little while longer, mostly because Jeff's mom threatened to leak embarrassing baby pictures if he 'spirited away' his girlfriend before she got to know her properly.

xxxxx

"Good morning, Jeffrey."

Jeff stops glaring at his and Annie's egg white omelettes cooking on the stove top to turn and offer his mother a smile.

She pats him softly on the shoulder and joins Annie at the table.

Annie absent-mindedly shifts the piles of paper strewn in front of her to make some space for Doreen.

"You know, Annie, it may be helpful if you drank your orange juice before poring over those files."

Annie looks up, startled. "How?"

Jeff, dropping two plates on a stack of creepy stalker-photos of Annie at Greendale, suppresses a smirk. He knows what his mom is going to say.

Doreen sees his smirk and sends him a sly wink before nodding to Annie's right.

"Because at least then you'll have less of a chance of using your glass as a pen stand."

The three of them stare at Annie's pen leaking ink into the bright orange juice.

"Oh."

xxxxx

"My mother hired a PI to stalk me indefinitely, and his um, _findings_ were copied. One set was given to mom, and the other to her fiancé."

"Yes."

"Hailey Clark, my mom's supposed best friend, was supposed to try and help me out at the trial, but she didn't for whatever reason."

"Bitch." (That earned him a swipe upside his head.)

"So either someone convinced her I'm a cold-blooded killer -"

"- or _she_ is the killer herself, and she tried to frame you."

Annie opens her mouth to reply, but she stops and looks frustrated. "It's all conjecture."

Doreen walks away from the sink where she'd been washing the breakfast dishes and looks at the papers in front of him and Annie for a second.

"Maybe someone forced her into testifying against you, Annie."

Jeff frowns, "I didn't think of that."

His mom affectionately pats his shoulder (he restrains the urge to check for soapsuds) and turns away. "Well you didn't think of the potential repercussions of getting a fake degree either, now, did you? This isn't your strong point, honey."

Annie stifles a giggle while Jeff groans.

"You are never going to let this go, are you?"

"No, sweetie. I'm not."

xxxxx

"Okay, so say Ms. Clark didn't kill my mom, who did?"

Jeff sighs and leans back in his chair, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "That's the million dollar question, isn't it?"

xxxxx

Annie lets out a frustrated sigh as she steps into the hot spray of the shower.

Closing her eyes, she tries to go over the facts again, simultaneously blocking out the chant in the back of her head.

_Whokilledherwhokilledherwhok illedherwhokilledher…_

There's a soft click somewhere, but she ignores it.

So when Jeff's arms encircle her and she feels his lips at her cheek, Annie shrieks.

Whirling around (as carefully as one can whirl around on wet tiles), she smacks his chest wetly. "What is wrong with you? And how did you get in here?" she demands hotly, ignoring the part of her brain that is now yelling at her to direct her eyes downwards.

Jeff chuckles lightly, pushing her lightly backwards so they share the stream of water from the shower. "I didn't expect you to shriek, Annie. And please. I know this house and a surprising amount of doors open if you know exactly how much _wiggling _is required."

She sends him an exasperated look. "So I'm supposed to feel comforted by the fact that you're capable of walking in on me in the bathroom any time you want? And anyway, this is way inappropriate, Jeff! We can't… you know, act like this. Your mom will hear us!"

She widens her eyes to convey her point, but Jeff just reaches calmly for the soap.

"One, mom isn't home. She's gone to her friend's house to pick up something."

Softly, he starts rubbing it into her skin, carefully lathering up bubbles on her arms.

"Two, that didn't stop you _last night_."

His voice lowers to a growl when he reaches the last two words, though Annie focuses more on Jeff's hands slowly making their way to the front of her chest.

"Three-"

Rolling her eyes, Annie knocks the soap out of his hands and pulls him down for a kiss.

"Okay, okay, you had me at 'one'."

xxxxx

Annie leans backs and sighs in frustration, running a hand through her still slightly-wet hair. "We've been over this a hundred times now, and we're getting nowhere, Jeff."

Next to her, Jeff throws the sheaf of paper he's holding down on the ground and reclines in his mom's squishy armchair.

"I know."

"We don't even know anything about my mom's _life_, we could easily be missing a hundred important things."

"I know."

"We're going back to the same thing over and over again. Clark. Levinson. Mom. Clark. Levinson. Mom."

"_I know."_

"It's practically useless. We're just running around in cir-"

"Believe me, Annie, _I know."_

They look at each other for a moment.

"So now what?" He mutters reluctantly.

They sit quietly for a few more seconds before Annie chucks her leaf of papers down on Jeff's pile.

"Okay, say I'm Clark."

Jeff raises his eyebrow and nods wearily.

"You're Clark."

"There are a few reasons I would want to see my best friend's daughter in jail. One reason, the simplest, is that I actually truly believe that the daughter is a murderer. The second reason is that _I_ am the murderer, and after killing Barbara Edison for whatever motive, I'm just trying to put the blame on someone else."

She pauses and Jeff's motions at her to continue.

"The third reason is that someone forced me to try and get Annie Edison in trouble. Now this someone has to be someone I _trust,_ or someone with some sort of hold over me."

Jeff sighs and leans forward to swipe the cold bottle of beer he'd left on the coffee table in front of him. "We've been over that too. This person would obviously be the murderer, or someone close to the murderer."

Annie nods, eyes bright, pulling his beer away from him to take a sip. "Yeah, I know. But that got me thinking about the murderer. We missed _one_ point Jeff."

He frowns. "What?"

"This person had to be someone who knew I was going to turn up later at my mom's place. Someone who banked on me coming to the house."

"If that's true," Jeff says slowly, "then the key you stepped on wasn't just an extra key your mom used to keep under the mat, it was planted there for you step on."

Annie nods faster. "Also, that explains how the neighbours looked out of the window at that exact time and how the police turned up at exactly the right time."

"So this proves we haven't missed anyone," Jeff continues, "but that we were on the right track in the morning. There are only two people in this city your mom was extremely close to. Her neighbours didn't even know her daughter was turning up for the wedding."

Annie gets up sharply. "So it's definitely either her fiancé or her best friend."

Jeff rises as well, snagging his bottle from between two couch cushions, where Annie had wedged it. "One of them betrayed her."

Annie nods soberly. "She finally trusted two people – and one of them killed her."

xxxxx

"Would Alex have done it?" Jeff muses out loud, carefully watching the road pavement for stray puddles of mud or water that could ruin his jeans.

He turns right, following his mother's gentle push.

"Maybe they had some sort of pre-nup, and just pulling out would have cost him?" Annie wonders thoughtfully, fingers dancing absent-mindedly over the buttons of her jacket.

Jeff feels a twinge of discomfort. He's met Levinson.

He liked him. Nothing about the man had screamed murderer…

Of course, he could very well just be a cool-tempered sociopath or something.

"What about Hailey Clark?" Doreen asks, pulling her grey sweater tighter around her chest.

"Jealousy? Revenge of some sort? Maybe she had a fight with my mom and it just ended badly." Annie says, looking around her at the neighbourhood, quietly taking in the little shrieking kids on bicycles and family vans everywhere.

"Maybe the motive was something more than that?" Doreen questions, sidestepping a six year old running blindly down the sidewalk.

Jeff shakes his head. "That makes no sense. The murder wasn't premeditated. If you want to kill someone, you don't usually decide that _pushing them onto a heavy table_ is a good idea."

Doreen shakes her head disapprovingly. "Don't make things sound so crude, Jeffrey."

He looks disbelievingly at his mom. "I'm sorry, how do I _sugar coat_ murder?"

She opens her mouth to answer, but Annie laces her arm through one of Doreen's. "Whatever you mean, maybe it'd be better for us to talk about something else for a while."

Pausing, she takes a deep breath and then determinedly changes the subject.

xxxxx

Only later, after his mom has fallen asleep, do they revisit the topic.

"I want to talk to the police tomorrow." Annie says grimly, brushing her hair.

_Oh, we're allowed to talk about this again, are we?_ Jeff thinks rather childishly, before his brain focuses on what Annie had said.

"Wait, why?"

She sets down her hairbrush and turns to the bed to pull back the covers. "Speculation on our part is all fine, but I want to know what the police are actually doing."

There's a certain tone of finality in her words, so Jeff just nods and gets into bed beside her.

There's a heavy silence for a moment, and Jeff struggles to ignore it, until he finally cracks.

"What was with the ban on this as a topic of conversation?" He asks softly.

Annie turns to him, eyes wide and dark, but a they're a stark contrast from the previous night.

"I don't want to obsess over this. If I do… I'm afraid I'll fall too deep into it and then I'll never recover."

He pulls her to him, feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach. All day, ever since he'd first come down to Denver, he hadn't thought even for a _second_ how Annie must have been feeling about all this.

"That's not going to happen."

"How do you know? What's going to keep me sane, Jeff? What is going to keep me from falling into that mess?"

Jeff can hear her (and practically _feel_ her) gearing up to a neurotic rant. He shifts and pulls her chin up with his hand so he can meet her eyes again.

"I will. I won't let you fall, Annie."

One more time, for emphasis.

"_I won't let go."_


	5. Chapter 5

"I understand your desire to know what is happening, Miss Edison, but all I can tell you right now is that we're-"

"-doing the best you can?" Annie interrupts, fixing the tall detective with a small glare.

Jeff nudges her knee slightly. Annie needs to calm down before she pisses off the detective enough to be thrown in jail again.

Sighing, Annie flops against the back of her chair and Jeff takes advantage of her silence.

"Look, we told you everything we suspect, and we're not even asking to be an active part of anything; but could you_ just_ keep us in the loop?"

Detective Buckley looks at Annie again, who's unleashed her Disney eyes.

"Miss Edison… I understand how you must feel. You've lost someone, and worse than that, you were blamed for the loss."

Jeff sees the expression on Annie's face; they both know what the detective is going to say.

_But you need to back off._

"So, you can stay here. We've considered the same things you have, and I just sent out a dispatch for Ms. Clark. We're going to see if anything she says can incriminate anyone, especially the fiancé. A neighbour came forward today, saying that she saw him go to the house that morning. If you _promise_ to stay where I tell you-"

"Are you serious?!"

Buckley suppresses a smile at Annie's shining face. "Yeah."

Jeff blinks. He did not expect this. Even when he'd turned up at as Annie's lawyer, the detective had been… well, kind of a bitch.

_Disney eyes really do work._

xxxxx

"Clark was supposed to be your mother's best friend. So we figured she had to know something. That was our mistake the first time. We didn't investigate, cover all the bases. We saw the smoke screen in front of us and didn't go any further. This time, we're doing it the right way." Buckley says as she looks contemplatively through a thick glass into the room next door.

Jeff exchanges looks with Annie. This revelation could have been handy if it had been around a little earlier. She shakes her head slightly at Jeff and approaches the two way glass in front of them, eyes fixed on the woman sitting beyond.

Hailey Clark's hair looks messy, and combined with the dark circles and haggard expression, it seems like the woman's been having a hard time.

_Good_, Jeff thinks savagely, recalling her behaviour at the court house.

There's a soft snap of the door as Buckley exits the room.

xxxxx

Annie's standing so close to the glass it brushes her nose, and she's so preoccupied with the interrogation that one hand lands on the glass, like she's trying to touch Clark.

Jeff winces when he sees her, as the image of his conversation with Annie at the prison flashes before his eyes. Carefully, he pulls his girlfriend closer to him and watches with relief as her hand slips away from the cool surface.

xxxxx

"I confess." Clark says suddenly, as soon as Buckley enters the room.

Jeff and Annie exchange startled looks.

"You… confess?" Buckley asks slowly, disarmed.

"Yes."

"To the murder of Barbara Edison?"

"To being an _accomplice_ of the murderer."

"Explain yourself," Buckley says tersely, leaning forward on the table.

"I – I helped the murderer. I told him he could use Annie Edison, because I knew she was supposed to have met Barbara that morning. And I played innocent ever since then."

"Who is the murderer?"

"I even led her lawyer to assume I would help her out and then I turned my back on her to make her look worse in court."

"_Who is the murderer, Ms. Clark?"_

Jeff knows what is coming. And he knows the others do too.

"It was Alex."

xxxxx

"_Why_ would Alex Levinson want tokillhis fiancée? On the day of their _wedding?_ And why did you _help_?"

"There was a pre-nup. I mean, Barb and Alex had signed a pre-nup. And it stated that, among other things… if Alex broke off the engagement anytime in the last week before the wedding, then to compensate for the loss of the expenses on the wedding, he'd have to pay Barbara. And the amount was astronomical."

"Why on earth was there a clause like that?"

"Barbara had already lost a family once. She was… paranoid. She didn't want to lose – god, she just didn't want to _lose_ again."

Jeff looks sideways at Annie. He's always wanted to know who she got her determination to win from – but this way sort of sucks.

"But why did Alex want to break the engagement, Hailey? Alex was in love, wasn't he?"

Clark looks down briefly at the table, then up to meet Buckley's eyes. "He was in love alright. But he wasn't in love with Barbara!"

"Excuse me?"

"Alex had made a mistake with Barb. He was in love with someone else, and he wanted out. But with Barbara's crazy, paranoid pre-nup, he had no way to turn. Alex doesn't have that much money. But he… he went a little crazy. He needed to be with her. With the woman he loved…"

"And that woman is you, isn't it?" Buckley asks softly.

Clark nods reluctantly.

"And you love him?"

Reaching up, the blonde wipes away some tears before answering in a thick voice.

"I knew it was wrong… but I had to help him. I had to help the man I loved. After years of quietly waiting for him to notice me, he finally wanted me – he just had one obstacle to cross. One mistake… mistake to erase." Clark sniffs.

"Why couldn't you just tell Barbara instead of murdering her, Hailey? She was your best friend wasn't she?"

Clark shakes her head in despair. "I didn't know what he was planning! He just called me up that morning… he said he needed me. Once I was there, I couldn't do anything but help. I remembered that the girl was supposed to turn up, so we set it up to implicate _her_."

Abruptly, Buckley turns and leaves the room.

Annie runs after her.

Jeff takes one lingering look through the glass at the broken woman inside the interrogation room, and then strides out after Annie, just in time to hear Buckley issue orders for the arrest of Alex Levinson.

xxxxx

He had _liked _Levinson.

The man had seemed so shattered, and so honest.

"So he is some sort of a sociopath," Jeff mutters to himself, watching Annie play absentmindedly with a paper clip on Detective Buckley's desk.

"What?" She asks distractedly, looking up from what seems like a crude sort of bent, paper-clip stick figure.

"Sociopath," he repeats.

Annie nods slowly, then opens her mouth, a line appearing between her eyebrows.

"I thought Mom was happy, Jeff. Even when we'd talked on the phone… I'd hated it, but she had sounded so _sure_ of Levinson and the wedding. She'd said that she was finally listening to what I'd yelled at her when I left home. She couldn't plan everyone's life out for them, so she wasn't going to this time."

Jeff frowns. "What are you saying, Annie?"

Annie shakes her head. "I don't know, Jeff. But I just know that the last thing she'd told me was that she was jumping headfirst into love, and she wanted her daughter to be there to see it."

xxxxx

After about thirty minutes, Alex Levinson is dragged into the station, wearing a crumpled shirt and a bewildered expression.

"What's going on?" He asks as he's propelled into the interrogation room.

xxxxx

"Why did a neighbour see you go to Barbara Edison's house the morning of the murder, Mr. Levinson? She says she saw you sometime roughly in our murder's time frame. At the time, she thought you were just sneaking in to see your bride before the wedding… but it was more than that, wasn't it?"

"_What?!"_

For the first time since Jeff's met Alex Levinson, he looks pissed off.

"_What are you saying?"_

Buckley tries to solder on with her questions, but Alex ignores them.

"You think _I_ killed Barbara? You think I killed the one person I loved the most?"

"We also know about the pre-nup you signed, Mr. Levinson."

"_What _pre-nup?"

Silence.

Then, "We were told that you and Barbara signed a pre-nup, Mr. Levinson."

"Look, ask my lawyer. Better yet, ask Hailey! She's been my friend for ever, why don't you ask her? She'll back me up."

"Ms. Clark was the one who told us about the pre-nup, Mr. Levinson." Buckley says. "The same time she told us how you wanted out of the engagement because the two of you were in love."

For a moment, the man looks lost.

"Why… why would she say that?" He whispers. "Why would she lie to you?"

Buckley doesn't say anything, but it's clear that Levinson doesn't want an answer.

No one needs an answer. Everybody gets what he's saying.

"I went to the house that morning because I'd forgotten a whole bunch of things for the wedding. I wasn't wearing the right tie… Barb wanted to kill me when I walked in, but we laughed it off. I told her… God, I told her that the old superstition of a bride and groom needing to be separated is complete nonsense."

"Can anyone back up your story, Mr Levinson?"

He frowns. "No," he says, but then his eyes lighten. "There's a camera. One of the neighbours has a camera, and it might have recorded me when I went in and out. Those things have time stamps, right?"

He leans forward and grabs Buckley's hand desperately. "I don't know why Hailey lied, but I swear to you, I didn't murder Barbara. I loved her with all my heart."

Annie pokes Jeff. "You know people, Jeff," She says quietly, "so you know when someone's lying."

Jeff knows what she's trying to say.

He doesn't think Levinson is lying either.

There's a rustle as Buckley removes a photo from a folder in her hands. Slapping it down in front her, she lowers her voice. "If you're lying, Mr. Levinson-"

Wildly, he grabs the photograph. "I didn't do this!" He looks at it with sad eyes.

"I left the house exactly like this, with the one exception of _Barbara _there. When I left, she'd gone to the bathroom to try out her wedding dress one last time before…" He trails off, a curious look on his face.

"That wasn't there, either." He says in a completely different voice, pointing at something. Jeff cranes his neck, but he can't see what it is.

"Huh? That scarf?" Buckley asks, taking the photo away from Levinson and peering at a corner. "How can you even be sure?"

"Because," he says, hesitantly, "I bought that. And I gave it to Hailey for a Christmas present two years ago."

He closes his eyes. "God, she did it, didn't she?"

xxxxx

"This is why I don't like the term BFFs," Buckley says, making a sharp left turn. "First sign of trouble and they're turning on each other."

Jeff doesn't answer, but keeps a worried eye on the road. Sure, they're going to arrest Hailey Clark (Alex's lawyer had cleared his name), but it's not completely necessary to drive like a total maniac.

Next to him, Annie peers out of the windows at the squad cars following Buckley's.

xxxxx

"She's gone. No clues, so signs of struggle. It looks like she just packed up and took her car out."

Buckley shuts off her phone and walks towards Jeff and Annie. "I need you both to go home right now. Clark is dangerous, capable of murder and probably a little disturbed. I can't have two people who are instrumental to the arrest of a known murderer to be walking around in daylight."

xxxxx

Night sets around them, as Doreen and Jeff make dinner while Annie sets the table. Everyone focuses on making light, cheery conversation, though no one misses the way Doreen's hand trembles now and again, or the way Jeff's nursing a gigantic tumbler of scotch, or the way Annie constantly checks her phone for any news updates.

They're worried.

xxxxx

After dinner, his mom drags him to her bedroom and under the pretext of getting his help to 're-attach the shower curtain', she warns him to watch Annie.

"She's highly strung, Jeff. And neither of you should be worrying about this anyway. The police will catch her mother's killer, and that will be the end of it."

The both notice how it sounds like she's reassuring herself as well.

xxxxx

Annie's cell phone rings.

"Hello?"

The caller's reply is clearly heard.

"_We need to talk, Annie."_

She turns pale, but Jeff is already moving towards the phone. Grabbing it, he switches it to speakerphone.

"Gladly, you bitch. Tell us where you are, and we'll arrange for a little party to meet with you."

"_Yes, yes. Very macho, Winger. But you don't have to go far. Just downstairs."_

Annie jumps, then crosses to the door and peers out into the gloomy shadows. "No one's there," she whispers. Unfortunately, Clark still hears.

"_I'm not in the house, sweetheart. You'll have to open the door."_

Narrowing her eyes, Annie grabs the phone out of his hands.

"And why the hell should I? So you can kill me, like you killed my mom?" Silently, she gestures at his phone. Nodding, he quickly dials Buckley's number.

"_I just want to talk."_

xxxxx

"Annie, what are you doing?" Jeff hisses, grabbing Annie's arm and pulling her away from the front door.

Whirling around, Annie pulls her arm out of his grasp. "Talking," she says grimly. "She wants to talk, Jeff. So we'll talk."

He's not sure what to do when he notices the gun Annie's holding with her right hand.

xxxxx

She breezes past the two of them and settles into is mom's favourite couch. Warily, Annie follows her, keeping the gun steady.

"What are you doing here?" Jeff asks roughly.

"I told you. I wanted to talk to you." Clark says, leaning her head back into the cushions and closing her eyes. "I hope you've called the police by now."

Annie drops her gun an inch. "What?"

Sighing, Clark opens her eyes again and smiles crookedly. "You look so much like Barbara, you know. Though I can't imagine her ever standing in a white nightgown, pointing a gun at me."

Annie lets out a huff. "You're right. She wouldn't have done that. But you don't know _me_. So try not talking about her like that, because you might piss me off enough to want to shoot."

Jeff shakes his head. "What _do_ you want to talk about, Clark?"

She turns to Jeff. "This whole mess."

Annie scoffs. "And why not just run?"

"Because I'm _tired_. Do you know how hard it was for me to make it seem like you killed Barb? How hard it was to pretend to be the mourning best friend and not just scream to the world that I was the _opposite_ of innocent? How much work I've had to do ever since I pushed your mother and she went and _fell_ into her coffee table?"

By the end, there's a slight note of hysteria in her voice.

"Do you have any idea how _draining_ it is to accidentally kill your best friend, then spend every waking moment following that trying to throw some _child_ into jail? How it feels to blame the man you've loved since you were in college?"

There it is. Annie looks at Jeff. "Motive," she says softly.

Ignoring the two of them, Hailey Clark just leans back again and continues.

"I fell for him when I was eighteen, like a fool. He never even noticed me, for the most, and then we were 'just friends'. I helped him through the wreck of his first marriage, and I stood by him all these years, just blindly wanting him… and then when I decide, inspired by my new client and friend, to move on, what happens?"

"He fell in love with her." Jeff says, taking advantage of her closed eyes to check his phone. Still recording.

"Yes!" She cries, standing up and pointing at Jeff. Backing away, Annie raises her gun again to point at Clark's face.

"After all that… so I went to Barb's house, after suffering for months, to just make a clean breast of things. Except then this… this _anger_ just spilled out. And before I knew what had happened, I was staring into her face, as she lay on the ground. And my own! It was… reflected in her blood."

There's a screech as two police cars stop in front of his mom's house.

Smiling faintly, Hailey Clark sits back down on the couch.

"I'm just so tired."

There's a whirlwind of activity around them, as police officers swarm in and cuff her, walking past him and Annie, who doesn't lower her gun until Clark is gone.

xxxxx

Jeff stops next to Annie and hands her a mug of coffee. For a few seconds, he watches her look blankly out the kitchen window. The sun is streaming in, through the leaves of his mom's pear tree. It makes her look tired, but still highlights the look in her eyes. The look that hasn't left since she raised her gun and pointed it at her mother's murderer's face.

"Annie?" He says tentatively.

Snapping out of it, she turns to him and smiles. "Sorry."

He raises his eyebrows.

Sighing, Annie takes a sip of the coffee. "I'm fine. I just… I don't know how to stop thinking about all of it. I mean, my mom is dead, Jeff. And… and there's just so much in my head right now."

Stamping down on the instantaneous worry that rises in his chest, he carefully pries the mug out of Annie's hands and pulls her into his arms.

"It's over." He says softly, breathing in the smell of her freshly washed hair.

"But it's not, Jeff. It's not getting out." Her words are muffled by his t-shirt, but he picks up on her tone. It's nearing Hysterical Annie levels.

Leaning down, he places a kiss on her lips. "It will, Annie. You just need to process it, then it'll get better. Everything."

"How?" She asks, looking up at him.

He smirks. "I'm your anchor, remember? You can dwell and mourn and be morbid, or whatever you want – I'll keep you grounded."


	6. Chapter 6

The drive back hadn't been easy.

_At least we're back_, Jeff thinks in relief, following Annie down the corridor to the door of 303, lugging their bags after him. They stop at the door of 303 for barely a moment, as Annie takes a deep breath and forces a smile onto her face, before it swings open to reveal a grinning Troy.

"Annie!" He cries excitedly, before leaning forward and grabbing Annie in a bear hug. Giggling, she extracts herself from the embrace and steps into the apartment, simultaneously kicking off her high heels.

"I'm home!" She squeals happily (seriously, Annie's probably the only grown woman in the world who can get away with squealing without sounding like a piglet) before being engulfed in more hugs from the study group.

xxxxx

"So how was the funeral?" Britta asks, as she helps unload Annie's suitcase in her bedroom.

She looks up from the shoe rack. "Oh, you know. Depressing. Confusing. It was a funeral for my mom, so my dad showed up with his new family-"

Jeff steps in and shrugs out of his suit jacket. "He spent about five minutes trying to not point out the fact that I'm older than Annie."

Annie rolls her eyes. "He can hardly be blamed, alright? I liked his wife, though. She was sweet." Smiling faintly, she turned back to the shoe rack and placed her high heels carefully in front of a white tag bearing the word 'fancy' on it.

Behind him, Shirley appears. "Really?"

Jeff shakes his head. "Sweet, but incredibly dumb."

"Jeff!" Annie cries in disapproval.

"So what else?" Andre asks, entering the room with Abed and Troy.

Annie shrugs. "I had to deal with a huge bunch of people I've never met before telling me how I looked like my mom, only with dark hair. Then Alex Levinson told me he'd like to keep in touch with me, because he was going to be my step-dad at a certain point in time anyway."

"Most awkward conversation ever," Jeff comments, lying back on Annie's bed against her pillows. He carefully stretches his legs out; after driving non-stop from Denver to Greendale, they feel a bit cramped.

"And then we left," Annie says with a shrug, zipping the now empty suitcase shut and shoving it under her bed. "We didn't change, had lunch with Jeff's mom, and then we came back."

"Lunch was completely awkward too, thanks to mom." Jeff says with a frown, recalling the cringe-worthy conversation.

"What happened? Did she ask Annie whether she wanted to have your kids? Or did she express her disapproval and try to pay Annie to leave your life forever?" Abed asks, his eyes lighting up.

Annie rolls her eyes. "No, Abed. And it wasn't _awkward_, Jeff just thinks it was. We actually had a nice time."

"Because we spent the whole time talking about me when I was a kid, and when I was a teenager, and what kind of person I was before Greendale," he grumbles.

Pierce walks in with a flask that Jeff eyes balefully. He has an inkling of what's in it.

"Please, Jeff. I think the terrible funeral trumps the conversation about _you_. Which you should have loved anyway," Britta comments with a smirk.

Before he can answer, Pierce starts to speak. "Oh, it's alright. These family events get all messy every time. I remember, I went to my fourth wife's mother's funeral, and things just went to hell _there_in about thirty minutes."

"Did you do something?" Jeff asks, raising his eyebrows.

"I'm insulted that you could blame me, Jeffrey," he says, sitting down in Annie's chair, "especially since I did absolutely nothing. I just met my third wife there."

"And?" Jeff prompts.

"And nothing!" Pierce cries indignantly. He pauses, but then nods in pride. "But I did bang her in one of the bathroom stalls."

Groaning, everyone shuffles out of the bedroom.

xxxxx

Surveying the sad selection of alcohol in the apartment's No No Juice cabinet, Jeff sighs. He needs to gift Annie some good Macallen.

"I need a drink," he mutters, closing the door.

Britta hears him and nods. "Yeah. We should go out."

"I can't drink, the boys are waiting for Andre and me at home." Shirley says, shaking her head. "Yeah," Andre agrees, "we left them with my sister, but I don't really trust her. The last time we let Maya babysit, she dressed up Ben in a cat costume."

"Oh, look, Britta and your sister would get along great!" Troy says. Then he ducks quickly to avoid the pillow Britta picks off the couch and throws at him.

"Okay, are we going or not?" Pierce asks, screwing on the cap of his tiny flask. "Because I just finished my own reserves of whiskey."

There's silence.

"I'll pay." Pierce offers.

"Let's go!"

"I'm in."

"Cool. Cool cool cool."

"Sweet!"

"Oh, I guess one drink won't harm anyone."

"You can buy me a virgin margarita, Pierce."

"I could buy you just a virg-"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, old man."

Everyone's already putting on their jackets when Annie speaks up. "Oh, you don't need to pay, Pierce. That's not really fair."

Everyone turns to her incredulously. "Annie, if Pierce pays, we can have the expensive stuff." Troy explains slowly. Annie looks troubled. "Yeah, but-"

Pierce waves her out the door. "It's alright. I didn't get to pay for your lawyer anyway, so consider this the lawyer's fee."

Jeff smirks. "You know, I don't really mind if you pay me, Pierce. I never said not to."

Annie reaches up and smacks him on his head.

xxxxx

"To me," Jeff says, raising his glass, "for being an awesome lawyer. And boyfriend."

"No, to _Annie_," Britta says, glaring and lifting her own glass of vodka, "for fending for herself in jail and really – oh wait, no! To me! For coming up with the plan to search her mom's house on our own!"

"Um, to _us_," Troy said, as he and Abed lifted their bottles of beer, "for forcing Annie to watch procedural shows and cop movies, because _that's_where she learnt to be a badass in jail."

"Um, to my mom?" Annie asks, slowly, picking up her own glass.

"To me! For paying for this!" Pierce cried.

"I think we should toast to Annie, for being strong and not taking drugs in jail," Shirley offers sweetly.

There's silence, then Andre raises his glass of whiskey hesitantly.

"Annie's not in jail?"

Everyone pauses, then clinks their glasses together. "Annie's not in jail!"

xxxxx

"Thanks, you know," Annie says softly, leaning against Jeff's shoulder as they watch Britta, Pierce, Troy and Abed engage in a complicated battle of darts.

"For what?" He asks, waving goodbye to Shirley and Andre.

"For being an awesome lawyer and boyfriend," She says with a small smirk, stretching up to give him a kiss.

As soon as he has his mouth back, he answers. "Yeah, I was pretty awesome."

Annie sends him a look, but he doesn't pay attention to it. "You know what the case has done to my reputation, by the way? Jeff Winger won a near-impossible murder case." He grins to himself, imagining the look of Alan Connor when he hears the news. _Suck it, loser._

"Well, yeah, I guess."Annie says doubtfully, moving away from his shoulder and toying with her drink.

It's like their… fourth glass each or something. Maybe fifth. He's not sure; numbers are sort of blurry at the moment.

"And it was aaaaaall without being paid," he mutters happily, knocking back the remnants of his glass.

Signalling to the bartender, Jeff looks at his girlfriend, who looks back at him with a bemused smile.

"You know why?"

"Why?"

Jeff tries to remember the thought… oh, yeah.

"I love you," he says with some difficulty.

Annie widens her eyes, then shakes her head. "You're shit-faced."

He narrows his eyes. "I could be both."

"Not really," Annie says, as she starts to slide out of the booth.

"Are you pissed?" Jeff asks.

She keeps moving. _Maybe she is pissed…_

"Okay, okay," he lays a hand on her arm, "wait."

Racking his brain, Jeff tries to say something to the slightly irritated blue eyes in front of him, but nothing comes out of that special part of his brain that usually thinks up the schmoopy stuff.

"Yeah, I got nothing," he sighs, letting go of her arm.


End file.
